How to put babies to sleep? Check out this mom's trick here!

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Dec 02, 2015 05:30 AM EST

One of the biggest hurdles of being a new parent is putting the baby to sleep, with their erratic eating and sleeping schedules that make parents lose sleep, which may bring several health problems. Yahoo! Parenting reports that according to the self-published author of "The Baby ‘Fast to Sleep’ Formula" and mother of two Karen Kirsner, there is a way for a baby to sleep for eight hours straight at night.

Kirsner has spent 12 years caring for babies as a babysitter and camp counselor, and her new book has become an Amazon best-seller. In it, she talks about her strategy to help babies sleep through the night. Like other parents, she wanted to get sufficient sleep at night and she discovered that adhering to a feeding and sleeping schedule, babies can actually sleep through the night.

Krisner calls her method "progressive watching", wherein parents are encouraged not to immediately respond to their child's cry. She does not, however, condone the cry it out method. Instead, she recommends waiting for 30 seconds before getting up and checking on the baby.

"Crying is a baby’s only way of communicating with you. So if they need you — if they need to be changed or fed — they will let you know," Krisner explained. "Otherwise, sometimes you’re creating a need and they get used to it. They think, ‘I make a noise and they come running.’"

Krisner recommends using the method as early as the time the child is born. She said that a gradual increase in the response time can guarantee that babies will sleep for longer periods of time, and will sleep for eight hours by the time they are eight weeks old.

"Start waiting for 30 seconds, then one minute. By eight weeks old, give it five minutes," she explained. She also recommends stretching the periods between feeding times.

"It can be as little as five minutes or half an hour, depending on your child because every child is different. It’s slowly but surely," she explained.

Authors Heather Turgeon and Julie Wright, who released the book "The Happy Sleeper: The Science-Backed Guide to Helping Your Baby Get a Good Night's Sleep", wrote on TODAY that "We don’t 'learn' to sleep, because it’s programmed deep in the brain, but we do 'learn' sleep habits."

Krisner's methods are similar, as the parent will teach the baby sleeping habits through the timed feeding and sleeping schedule. According to Turgeon and Wright, "You can’t train a human being to sleep—we are built to sleep. It takes time for a newborn’s circadian system to mature, but after five months or so, a baby is capable of long stretches of nighttime slumber."

WebMD also recommends observing a child's signs of tiredness, such as rubbing eyes, yawning, fussing, and looking away from the parent. These cues can help parents determine when a child wants to sleep. Likewise, create a day-night sleep cycle that will tell the baby when it's time to be active and when it's calm time. When it's dark, keep the indoors quiet and free from distractions and stimulants as well, to echo time outside. It's also best to consult a pediatrician if a child continues to experience sleeping problems.

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